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mise en place

mise en place

1 6.9
The preparation and tidy arrangement of ingredients and tools before cooking
  • noun
  • /ˌmiːz ɑːn ˈplɑːs/
  • Jargon
translation icon : mise en place
  • Before starting to cook, set up your mise en place by chopping vegetables and measuring out spices.

Examples

  • Having a well-organized mise en place helps ensure that each dish is prepared efficiently and with precision.

  • It's almost as essential to set up your mise en place for pizzaritos as it is for pizza.

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  • Experienced chefs live by the concept of "mise en place" (French for "set in place"), meaning that they get their work station completely ready before beginning to cook.

    Blog text (20)
  • The physical preparation aspect of mise en place means that as the school year launches, you gather around you all the physical "implements" that will make your study process as comfortable, and therefore, as effective as possible.

    Blog text (20)
  • So these days, before I start my elaborate mise en place, sometimes I just tap out a few sentences while my son is coloring, while the baby is chattering away in his high chair, while dinner's bubbling on the stove.

    Blog text (18)
  • In professional kitchens, chefs emphasize the importance of mise en place to streamline the cooking process.

Synonyms

preparation
vsmise en place
343 1.9

Making something ready for an event, activity, or use

is specific to arranging ingredients and tools before cooking

Antonyms

7 3.8

A lack of order or system that makes things untidy

How Prepared

mise en place
  • Jargon
1 6.9
preparation
343 1.9

Surface Forms

mise en place singular

Morphology

mise + en + place

The phrase is a French loan literally meaning 'putting in place' (mise = putting, en = in, place = place), so a learner who knows the constituents could infer a sense of arranging or setting things ready. However, its use as a specialized culinary term for the systematic preparation and layout of ingredients/tools is a conventionalized, register-specific meaning and the constituents are not English words, so the exact culinary scope is not fully predictable to a B1 learner without exposure.

Etymology

Mise en place comes from French and literally means 'put in place', with mise meaning 'putting' and place meaning 'place'. Chefs lay out all ingredients and tools before cooking so everything is ready, and today mise en place means 'preparation and arrangement'.